Please note: This Archive has since been updated and is available in v4.0 here.

The Ultimate Tape Archive V3.0

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Release date: 25th of August, 2021

Welcome to the most complete Commodore 64 cassette archive that exists. By complete, we do not mean it contains all the titles ever made, but all included titles are complete with coverscans and manuals all in one place for you to enjoy.

It's been another year, and the world has changed in ways that we couldn't possibly have imagined. We hope that you may find some comfort in some things that don't change, like the old Commodore 64 classics that you used to love. We are slowly trying to do everything in our power to preserve that legacy.

We gave you the first 500 releases in December 2018, then doubled it to 1000 in August 2020. We didn't double this time, but we added the same amount of new titles as with the previous release, making it a total of 1500 complete releases. This is The Ultimate Tape Archive V3.0!

As we mentioned last time, we strive for 100% complete releases, but have decided to still include a few releases that we currently miss posters or audio tapes for, since it does not directly affect the playability of the games.

We have now reached a point where you will see quite a few games in more than one version, sometimes even three or more. This is a result of us focusing on releases rather than the games. Users who choose to only keep the .tap-files will, in most cases, not notice any difference between them, because it is likely that only the packaging is different, especially in the case of budget label re-releases.

For the tapes that can benefit from index files (.idx, supported by DC2N, NOVA64 and the Ultimate products), we've still done our best to create them, particularly for multi-game compilations and multi-load games. A few of these multi-load games are so poorly programmed, that they do not stop the tape when a title screen or level is loaded. There is no workaround that we can apply for these, so if you find a game not loading properly, be sure to check if this is the cause. There is also one version of the Burner fast loading system we are aware of that will not work on all C64s. This is because the loader is written using unofficial machine code instructions, some of which are unstable and create different results on different C64s.

Once again we have used Tape Manager V1.3 (https://csdb.dk/release/?id=172213) to organize the content, and again exported an sqlite-file for the NOVA64 front end. The late st version can be downloaded from CSDB (https://csdb.dk/release/index.php?id=207293). The front-end will enable you to run the images on both emulators and on real C64s.

And also as before...

You are free to distribute this archive to your friends, but it should always remain 100% free and kept away from any solutions that require any kind of registration or payment. Apart from that, we do not care much about what happens, as we consider this a piece of history, OUR history. We will try to release updated versions of this archive as we progress in the task of testing, cleaning and editing scans of the releases we acquire. Only images from known sources are included in this archive.

We hope you will have fun and find lots of great memories!

A huge thank you to Rich Stevenson, former Alligata employee, for helping out with scans for the legendary and almost mythical Who Dares Wins!

And also a big thank you to Stadium64 for once again supplying missing manuals for a number of games that enabled us to include them in this release!

Signed,

The Ultimate Tape Archive Team